Lightsaber, of course, by far outperform any melee weapon on earth. No question there.
Blasters, on the other hand, while they have greater power, have a lot slower rate of fire than modern guns. Even tripod mounted blasters are outperformed by heavy machineguns.
SF flashy works great for melee, less good for ranged.
I think Wong's exhaustive image captures and analyses of the OT refute this somewhat, stating that the blaster bolts do much better damage per shot, and the visible laser we see does not correspond with the actual speed of the projectile in some cases.
Also, the artillery and ship weapons dish out damage in megatons versus kilotons comparatively.
Blasters have been shown both in the movies and in the EU itself to really have about the same stopping power as real life bullets. That's probably more a result of the authors having "no sense of energy", but , yeah.
Getting shot by blasters and it being "just a flesh wound", or "my life sucks but I'll make it" is a pretty standard action cliche we see in Star Wars. If blasters were as powerful as Wong makes them out to be, that hit Leia took should have amputated her arm at the shoulder.
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Same with Aayla Scura, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and pretty much everyone else that we see get riddled with blaster bullets in the movies. Once the sparks from the blast dissipate, the actual wounds on the bodies are roughly bullet-hole sized. We've people get cut in half, de-limbed and beheaded numerous times onscreen by lightsabers, so I'm not inclined to believe that it's a PG-13 issue.
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Last edited by Tzeentch on Nov 13th, 2013 at 09:01 PM
Good point, Blax. The damage to individuals is very inconsistent, and the "hero is immune" trope comes into play a lot. However, I'd like to point out that all of the examples you included were Force sensitives. There may be something to that. Also, 'grazing hits' on such individuals may be less intense. After all, Obi-Wan got a metal walking platform dropped on his legs, but they didn't even swell or hurt afterwards.
And yes, LOS is about the only artillery we see, which is stupid considering the level of tech in the series.
While not taking his arguments entirely as my own, I wanted to showcase some of what Wong has said on it here:
Regarding Small Arms
The range and accuracy of a Star Wars handgun is unknown, but ergonomic considerations limit the accuracy of a handgun in the hands of the average human being irrespective of its theoretical capabilities. Handguns have been used effectively at ranges of 10-15 metres in the films, thus establishing that their effective range is at least as long as that of modern handguns. An unanswered question is the ammunition capacity of a Star Wars handgun. During the protracted battle of Naboo, we never saw anyone pause to reload once, which suggests that the heavy Naboo handguns can fire at least a few dozen shots before reloading. It is unfortunate that we never see the reloading procedure, because it would be interesting to compare the ergonomics of this process to that of modern handguns.
The penetrating power of a Star Wars handgun probably varies greatly from design to design, much like the power of modern handguns. Han Solo's blaster is quite large, and was seen blasting torso-sized chunks out of the docking bay walls in the Mos Eisley getaway scene as seen below. This gives it knock-down power more like a grenade launcher than a handgun, and it makes sense in light of its owner. Unlike a professional soldier, Han Solo is a man who expects to get into a gunfight against very limited odds, most likely in the form of a "mano a mano" showdown. The fact that he filed off his iron sights to facilitate the quick-draw (as described in "Han Solo at Star's End") supports this speculation, since that is the sort of act which is virtually incomprehensible for anyone who expects to get into any other kind of combat. Therefore, he packs a gun which sacrifices ammunition for sheer killing power, so that even the most superficial glancing hit is virtually guaranteed to be lethal.
A real-life analogy would be the target-shooter, criminal, guerilla, or gun enthusiast who carries a huge handgun like the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. Enormous cartridges like this are really much too powerful for military or police use, since their size and power come at a cost in ammunition capacity, and military and police use may require simultaneous engagement of multiple enemies, thus making ammunition capacity more important. Therefore, guns like this are not used by military forces and police officers (except for Dirty Harry, of course), but they are popular with many other types of gun owner, and there is a certain glamourous cachet about carrying one of the most powerful handguns in the world.
^ So in this case, Han Solo's blaster is not the norm and shouldn't be used as an indicator of traditional pistol small arms used by say, the Republic or the Empire.
The tiny handguns used by Queen Amidala and her handmaidens were much less powerful than Han Solo's weapon, but they still had enough firepower to knock the Neimoidian battle droids off their feet and put them down permanently. The lack of sights or scopies or any other protrusions indicates that they were designed for concealment and extreme close-quarters use, as demonstrated by the fact that they were invariably hidden from view, either on the persons of Queen Amidala's handmaidens or inside the armrest of her throne. Weapons like this are analogous to modern "holdout weapons" and would presumably have a very limited number of shots, for the purpose of holding off an enemy until help can arrive rather than engaging in full-fledged combat. As with Han Solo's gun, a gun like this will be designed for excessive firepower since it is crucial to ensure that each shot counts.
^ Even personal hold out blasters have kinetic knockback and can destroy combat droids. It's not a stretch to say that they might have an edge against standard Kevlar or other body armor, given that the ranges are comparable.
At the other end of the spectrum from these specialized weapons, Captain Panaka's Security S-5 military handgun resembled a modern general purpose handgun, designed for a wide variety of functions appropriate for police use. According to the Episode 1 Visual Dictionary, it had a rangefinding scope, an under-slung stun dart launcher, a stun setting, and a grappling hook attachment with a retractable liquid cable. It was powerful enough to put down a battle droid without being capable of reducing them to debris the way Han Solo's gun would have, and he was able to fire a great many shots without having to reload. He was also able to blast a large hole in a nearby window without injuring nearby friendlies, which suggests the use of low-powered shots (or perhaps dual power settings, since it was still powerful enough to dismember metallic battle droids). Similarly, the scout trooper handguns in ROTJ were not particularly destructive, although they were undoubtedly powerful enough to kill, thus indicating that they probably compromised firepower for the sake of miniaturization and ammunition capacity. As with real-life handguns, there is undoubtedly a Imperial manufacturer of handguns to suit every purpose, from enthusiasts to criminals, bodyguards, and soldiers.
Dual power settings in particular might address some inconsistencies.
His small arms page is here. Strictly small arms, the fight is closer, but if you start bringing in the navies of just about any SW society, it becomes a stomp.
When we come up with a planet-destroying-laser and swords made of light energy and starships sized kilometers long and other tech way out of our league we can talk.
Meh. Lightsabers would be cool and all, but... one bullet is all it would take.
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Blaster carbines have burst fire of about 1/6th of a second and the shots are potentially more dangerous. Official range exceeds our smgs and some ARs. I don't know, I think Imps or Republic armies have a serious edge. Larger clips, possible smartaim systems, etc. And then you have thermal detonators, E-Webs, self aiming sniper rifles....
Also, the original order of Clone Troopers is comparable to a North Korea.
Except that's not the question, the original post only mentions ground weapons, not how our space forces compare.
Heavy machine guns beat E-Webs. Our automatics have *much* higher rate of fire than 1/6th of a second, three round burst, higher observed accuracy, not leaving a visual tracer.... sure, there's more ammo, but our small arms flat out perform better.
Long story short (and yes, I read the page), the basic rifles of the Republic, the CIS, and the Empire are all inferior to modern assault rifles in performance against all but heavy armored targets. The fastest firing blaster weapon we've seen falls short of a machinegun.
Also there's less soldier-portable heavy weapons ala RPGs and the like.
Honestly I don't see any way that Medieval or modern weapons would be able to combat lightsabres (or even vibroblades for that matter). The very first time you try to block/parry the lightsabre, or the opponent parries your attack, your weapon will be sliced in two.
I actually wondered if say, a trained swordsman with a regular sword vs. a Jedi/Sith would be better off unarmed since if the Jedi goes to attack, the swordsman's natural reaction would be to parry the blow which just means the lightsabre slices through his sword and then through him. Same with a guy with a knife, nunchucks, a nightstick etc.
If he was unarmed at least he could just try to dodge without his own trained reactions hampering him.
Last edited by chilled monkey on Nov 14th, 2013 at 04:34 AM
I will mention that in a lot of styles, avoiding is preferable to parrying to begin with. (And knife fighters almost never parry)
And it's still far, far preferable to have reach of your own. 2-3 feet of reach advantage is a huge thing. Plus, of course, the ability to end it quickly which unarmed doesn't really give.
I'd rather have a cut-in-half sword rather than unarmed, let alone an intact one.
Parrying ruins blade integrity, especially edge on edge (which drives me nuts in media, western or eastern).
Regarding RoF, I don't think that alone is sufficient. If you took a modern military now and it faced off against an Imperial army or the Clone Army, which was able to use air transports only and could not exercise starships for anything other than delivery of arms and more soldiers (such as establishing a beachhead on a planet it cannot glass), those troops have the advantage in several ways:
1. Reloading is not an issue. Not sure how much you've fired automatic weapons IRL, but most clips when fired in full retard mode empty before your sweat can hit the ground. This isn't counting the way in which it can compromise a weapon, disrupt accuracy, and go against most standard training. There's a reason why we went from full auto M16s in Vietnam to selective firing single or burst shot M4s now. Even MGs are used in stationary positions or for covering fire, so on a battlefield this has very selective usage.
2. Ranges meet or exceed conventional firearms range. This is important, because they already have increased ammo capacity which reduces reload concerns, and RoF as I discussed above is not as crucial as you suggest. If this were true, every moron in Somalia with an AK would beat European soldiers every time.
3. Damage done by larger firearms is pretty powerful. The equivalent of an assault rifle has a longer effective range and does obscene damage per hit, and would be the likely weapon of choice on a wide open battlefield versus a closed area where an SMG/carbine type would prevail. This leads to a situation where the maximum effective range of the SW army exceeds that of the enemy and they can do much more damage per shot, which results in a bunch of crispy soldiers holding their lines, trenches, etc.
Nov 13th, 2013 12:26 AM
